Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts


The Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, is a public institution of higher learning located in downtown Kraków, Poland. It is the oldest Polish fine arts academy, established in 1818 and granted full autonomy in 1873.
ASP is a state-run university that offers 5- and 6-year Master's degree programs. As of 2007, the Academy's faculty comprised 94 professors and assistant professors as well as 147 Ph.D.s.

History

The Academy of Fine Arts was originally a subdivision of the Jagiellonian University's Department of Literature and was initially called School of Drawing and Painting. Among its original teachers were Polish Neoclassicist Antoni Brodowski, and Franciszek Ksawery Lampi, a world-renowned landscape and portrait artist in Congress Poland whose most notable students there were Wojciech Korneli Stattler and Piotr Michałowski, equestrian master artist of the Romantic period.
ASP received the status of an independent institution of higher learning in 1873 as the School of Fine Arts. The first President of the Academy was painter Jan Matejko, who brought in other leading artists as professors including Jan Nepomucen Głowacki, the most outstanding landscape painter of the early 19th century in Poland, as well as Florian Cynk, Aleksander Gryglewski and Leopold Loeffler, member of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. The main building based on a neoclassical design by architect Maciej Moraczewski was erected in today's Matejko Square in 1879. In 1893–95 its principal was a broadly educated Władysław Łuszczkiewicz who also served as conservator of architectural monuments in the city.
Following the death of Jan Matejko in 1893, the next ASP President elected in 1895 was Julian Fałat, who remained at his post until 1909. Fałat gave the Academy a new direction by hiring new art instructors associated with contemporary Western art philosophies; painters such as Teodor Axentowicz, Jacek Malczewski, Jan Stanisławski, Leon Wyczółkowski, Konstanty Laszczka, Józef Mehoffer, Stanisław Wyspiański, Wojciech Weiss, and Józef Pankiewicz among others.
On the 100th anniversary of its founding, in 1979, the Academy was named for Jan Matejko, its founder and first president, who contributed greatly to its artistic legacy.
In 2008 the Academy joined Icograda and became that organization's first educational member in Poland.

Faculties